When She Loses
by Tonzura123
Summary: It's a different sort of victory for Miss Clarisse La Rue... Clayson fluff. Movie-verse with bits of the books. Written for my little sister.


**When She Loses**

**by Tonzura123**

**A/N: For my sister, who drop-kicked this idea into my brain and then nailed-gunned it in. This story is definitely movie-verse, although I'm in love with the book series by Rick Riordan and cannot wait for my copy of "House of Hades" to arrive.**

* * *

She punched him on the shoulder and grinned. "Listen Tyson, you kick more butt than most people with two eyes!"

And maybe it was the grin, or maybe it was the punch, or maybe because _right after that_ Percy JackSquat-For-Brains was calling Tyson "brother" and giving him the first hug of his life.

But whatever the reason, Clarisse La Rue knew she was in trouble.

**OoOoOoOoO**

It started with flowers.

And okay, sure, flowers were pretty cool and stuff, _for nymphs and Aphrodite-spawn_. But she was a daughter of Ares. She was the muscle, the brute force, the General. Hadn't she explained that to Jackson? Wasn't that idiot supposed to pass that sort of knowledge on to lower-ranked siblings? He probably had water on the brain.

So yeah. It was first thing in the morning and she was getting ready to go for a ten mile run. You know, work out the kinks and warm up for the day. She strapped on her armour and got her spear and took one step outside and felt something crunch underfoot.

At first, she was thinking- bones? Bow and arrow? But no. It was a bundle of little white flowers, tied together with some kind of vine. She just sort of stared at it for a minute, wondering what the heck it was doing on _her _cabin's porch and whether or not she needed to beat up some cousin that was hitting on one of her siblings.

Then she decided, better not mess with all that romance stuff, because her kids were going to have to learn to stand up for themselves.

She kicked the flowers out of the way and ran.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Next time, it was a box.

That's it. That's what the present was- a box. Like something you'd see in an antique store or the old-timey section of Ikea. It was wooden and pretty detailed and had (whoo-freaking-hoo) more flowers.

There was nothing inside. Clarisse checked. And she was really getting tired of stuff being left on the porch. Sure, all the cabins had to be kept relatively clean (though cabins like Hermes' and Hephestus were a little harder to keep in order because of overflow and mad scientists), but she kept hers like a Greek warrior should: _Spartan_.

That meant no mess. Everything away. Anything unnecessary was thrown into the furnace by the Hephastus Cabin.

She juggled the box for moment. She was no artist, but she could tell when time went into something, and when it went in _very recently_. There was still a lingering scent of pine.

She turned it over and blanched- a little heart was carved into the bottom.

That did it. Today she was totally teaching her cabin how to ward off unwanted romance.

But, in the meanwhile, she made sure to burn the box.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Sparring was Clarisse's favourite part of Camp Half-Blood. Hands down, no contest.

Sure, the carnival competitions were still great (when did she _not_ enjoy beating everyone at the same time?) but the one-on-one battles were something ingrained in her. Her father was big on testing strength against strength. Human against human. Human against god. There was something heady about it. Something better than an all-out brawl.

The whole camp couldn't possibly fit in the arena, so Chiron pulled the names of two gods from Mr. D's wine cask: _Ares _and _Poseidon._

Which, really, was like a freaking garrison against Percy and Tyson. But Mr. D didn't really care if the sons of Poseidon were made into crab-cakes and Chiron didn't really look like he thought the sons of Poseidon _would _be turned into crab-cakes, so it was _on!_

The arena was just like you'd expect- a sandy pit surrounded by tiered seats and pillars. It was like a mini Coliseum. The Demeter kids flattened out the earth and the Hermes cabin was supposed to have worked some booby-traps into the ground. If it was anything like the original, Clarisse wouldn't be surprised to find it flooded at one point or another. And boy oh boy, would they be in trouble then. While Tyson didn't get many water powers, Percy would be a pain the neck. Instant Natural Disaster! Just add water!

But she didn't plan to let the battle get that far.

"ATTACK!" she roared, raising her beloved _Maimer _and charging at the sound of the gong.

She could see Percy mutter something to Tyson before rolling out of the way, and she went at the Cyclops like she was going to jab the business-end of her spear into his face. He flinched, but she turned it at the last moment, swinging low for his legs.

The spear struck!

It was like hitting a cement wall- the impact stung her hands and rattled the bones in her arms. If she hadn't been ready for it, she might have dropped the spear out of instinct.

"Are you okay?" Tyson asked worriedly.

Clarisse roared and jumped, cracking it down on him from above, going for pressure points. It bounced off of his neck, off of his ribs, she had to land again before she thrust it down on his foot.

"Ow," he said.

Which, really, did he _want _her to kill him?

"Fine, big guy," Clarisse growled. She thumbed up the voltage, watched little bolts of electricity curl and snap out of the tip of the spear. With a prayer of thanks to Ares, she thrust _Maimer _forwards, jabbing it into the soft skin of his armpit.

"_Ow!" _Tyson yelped. He backed away and look uncertainly at her, then behind her. She could hear the sounds of Percy flaying her brothers and sisters alive, the weird song of _Riptide_'s blade hitting her ear.

"Don't look at Percy!" she snapped. "Look at me! Tuck in your arms and press the advantage!"

Tyson awkwardly tucked his arms, looking like a giant, one-eyed chicken. "Um, like this?"

She almost dropped _Maimer _again, she was so aghast. "Who's been teaching you how to fight?"

"Um," shuffled Tyson. "Um, big brother said-"

She smacked him over the head. It didn't hurt him. Much. "Ignore big brother!"

"I am," he said. His one large eye looked down at her, unwavering. "I'm looking at you."

But then, maybe Tyson _did_ have some sort of weird Poseidon power after all, because the moment she locked eyes with him, she couldn't move. And not only that; it didn't really feel like she wanted to.

_Move! Strike! _the Ares part of her was raging.

But the La Rue part... hadn't really noticed how _soft _and _blue_ that eye was...

It barely mattered. A second later, there was a sound like an ocean rushing in, and she heard Percy yell, "Tyson, heads-up!" and then she was completely washed away in a torrent of water, beached on the top tier of the coliseum like a sputtering fish in a school of her siblings.

**OoOoOoOoO**

The smell of sea brine took hours to scrub out.

She spent the rest of the day running drills with her cabin, bossing them up and down the obstacle course, around the lake, into their beds where they would snore for eight perfect hours and then up again at the crack of dawn. She didn't know why she was so focused all of a sudden. She felt angry, but also sort of excited and put it down as an eagerness to beat the living snot out of Jackson the next time she saw him.

At breakfast the next morning, she piled her plate with red meats and bread and grabbed a flagon or two of root-beer, hunkering down to organize the training schedule for the next week.

Something bumped her chair.

"Get out of here, loser, before I rip your limbs off," she said in an amiable growl.

"Uh-"

She turned, looked up, and then _kept_ looking up. "Tyson?"

He ducked his head, hiding a little behind his dreads and holding up his plate of fruits and sandwiches like a shield. "Hi. Are you sitting alone?"

"Uh," Clarisse said, glancing at her otherwise empty table. "Yeah."

"Want to sit with me and brother?"

Behind him, Clarisse could _just barely_ make out the blue eyes of Percy Jackson, which widened when they met hers and ducked out of sight, instead staring determinedly into a plate full of... blue pizza?

"Nah, that's cool, Ty," she said and lifted her plans. "Got lots of work to do anyway."

He nodded, and shifted like he was thinking of walking away, but couldn't. He was staring down at her, almost transfixed. "Um. How about later?"

"You want me to eat with you and Water Boy later?"

His eye flickered. "Uh. No. I mean. Maybe... maybe we could go down to the lake. Or you could see our cabin. It's really cool!" he insisted, smiling. "Percy's really smart. He figured out how to make the whole cabin ride on the waves from the lake, instead of being built on the ground by the lake, and Annabeth helped him with it because she wants to be an architect, and I think it would be really nice for practising, you know, how to fight on moving water because it feels like you're standing on a boat instead of inside a cabin. Heh."

"I get seasick," Clarisse said automatically.

Tyson was horrified. "That sucks!" he cried. "Then we won't go there. We can do something else. Whatever you want to do."

"Tyson," Clarisse said, rubbing at her temple. "I don't really have a lot of time to play around with..." It was like finding a sword that fits your hand _just right_. The thought slid into place in her mind and she couldn't imagine another answer. "Tyson, have you been leaving me presents?"

As it turned out, Cyclops could blush with the best of them. Clarisse had never seen that shade of red before in her life- and she had been there when the Aphrodite kids decorated the entire camp with hearts and cupids for Valentine's Day.

"Oh, man," Clarisse said. "Oh, man."

Tyson had completely frozen up. He looked like he was either going to run away or be sick to his stomach and Clarisse found herself standing up _very_ quickly, grabbing him by the sleeve and dragging him outside of the mess hall.

**OoOoOoOoO**

They actually went well beyond the mess hall. They ended up in the woods, by Thalia's tree.

She marched until she could feel the electric crawl of the barrier, and then let Tyson go. They faced each other.

"What's going on here, Tyson?" she demanded. "You have a crush on me?"

Miserably, he nodded. "I think you're beautiful."

She punched him. He rubbed his arm with a sad puppy-look.

"I'm not beautiful," Clarisse snarled. "I'm a soldier."

"You're both to me," Tyson mumbled.

"Knock that off!" Clarisse said. "Listen, I'm sure girls go all goo-goo when a good looking guy tells them how pretty they are and how much they like them, but I ain't one of 'em, all right? You wanna impress me? You're gonna have to _beat_ me, got it? No more of these dumb dead flowers and girly boxes and-"

And whatever else she was going to say hardly mattered. Because in that next second, Tyson's eye narrowed, his arms tucked in, and one hand shot out for her leg.

The next thing Clarisse La Rue knew, she was dangling in the air, watching an upside-down Cyclops grin at her.

"Want to go to the obstacle course tomorrow?" he asked.

Maybe it was the punch, she thought. Or the grin. Maybe it was the Ares part of her that recognized when she was beat, or the La Rue part that didn't mind.

Clarisse sighed, letting her arms hang. "Yeah, whatever Big Guy."

As far as losing went, it still sort of felt like a victory.


End file.
